So long, Jabari Blash. The Yankees have traded him to the Angels for cash or a player to be named later, the team announced. Blash had been designated for assignment earlier this week to clear a 40-man roster spot for the newly acquired Brandon Drury. Too bad. I was looking forward to seeing some Blashtoffs in Spring Training.

Blash, 28, came over from the Padres in the Chase Headley salary dump back in December. He’s a career .200/.323/.336 (84 wRC+) hitter with eight homers in 279 big league plate appearances, all with San Diego. Blash has power, but that’s about it. ZiPS even projected him for 25 homers in 2018.

Even when Blash gone, the Yankees are loaded with outfielders. Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Brett Gardner, Aaron Hicks, and Jacoby Ellsbury are entrenched at the MLB level, plus Clint Frazier, Jake Cave, and Billy McKinney are on the 40-man roster and will be in Triple-A. Good luck in Anaheim, Jabari.

The upcoming Grapefruit League rotation: Luis Cessa (Friday), Domingo German (Saturday), Jordan Montgomery (Sunday), and Sonny Gray (Monday). Friday’s and Sunday’s games will be televised. Adam Warren is expected to come out of the bullpen either Saturday or Sunday. That’s all we know so far. [Billy Witz]

Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and Brett Gardner will not be in the lineup for Friday’s spring opener. Judge is coming back from shoulder surgery and Aaron Boone said the plan is to ease him back into things. He’s expected to begin playing next week. Sanchez and Gardner are fine. Friday just isn’t their day to play. [Jack Curry, Pete Caldera]

Brian Cashman said Drury will compete for the third base job, though “nothing will be given to anybody.” He seemed to indicate Drury is the favorite to start at the hot corner. Miguel Andujar said the trade doesn’t change his preparation. He’s going to try to win the job. Gleyber Torres, meanwhile, will focus on second base going forward after moving around earlier in camp. [Curry, Meredith Marakovits, ErikBoland]

This is the open thread for the night. The Knicks and Nets are playing, there are a bunch of college basketball games on the schedule, and the Olympics are still going. Talk about anything that isn’t religion or politics here.

As expected, the No. 1 story so far this spring has been Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. Every single day it’s Judge and Stanton, Stanton and Judge. And that’s understandable. They’re both great and now they’re teammates. When the Yankees have players like that, they’re the center of attention. It’s a good thing for baseball.

While Judge and Stanton hog all the headlines, other young Yankees like Gary Sanchez and Gleyber Torres have mostly flown under the radar. Sanchez was hitting missiles in batting practice the other day and the ESPN News broadcast — I still can’t believe they cut in for spring batting practice — didn’t say a word. Torres is in the running for the second base job and hasn’t been talked about much, relatively speaking.

Also flying under the radar: Greg Bird, no pun intended. Granted, position players have only been in camp since Sunday, but there’s still been very little chatter about Bird. Last year he was the talk of camp between the return from shoulder surgery and the way he hit in Grapefruit League games. Now he’s coming off a nice postseason run and will again try to stay healthy, yet nothing. Everyone is talking about Judge and Stanton.

“I think he’s an impact middle of the order hitter on a championship caliber team. I think when we see him healthy and at his best I think he’s a guy that will be a real option to hit in the middle of our order,” said Aaron Boone to Bryan Hoch yesterday, reminding us that yes, Bird is talented and the Yankees love him. The injuries have been unfortunate. When he’s been healthy though, Bird has produced.

Because of those injuries, we’ve yet to see Bird for an extended period of time at the big league level. We can break his MLB time into three distinct segments:

Second half 2015: .261/.343/.529 (137 wRC+) in 178 plate appearances

Pre-injury 2017: .100/.250/.200 (29 wRC+) in 72 plate appearances

Post-injury 2017: .253/.316/.575 (128 wRC+) in 98 plate appearances

When healthy — he played hurt before going on the disabled list last year — Bird has been pretty good, and there’s every reason to believe he will continue to be good as long as he stays on the field. Exactly how good? No one really knows, because even when Bird was healthy, he wasn’t really healthy. He played through the shoulder injury in 2015, and late last year he was coming off that long layoff.

Here, for the sake of discussion, are what the various projection systems have for Bird going into 2018:

PECOTA: .247/.333/.469 (.276 TAv)

Steamer: .253/.342/.493 (120 wRC+)

ZiPS: .240/.333/.480 (114 wRC+)

Middling average, a good number of walks, and lots of power. Lots and lots of left-handed power. The one thing I am most confident in Bird doing is hitting for power. The shift might take away some base hits and minor league walk rates are notoriously fickle. Power though? Bird will hit for power. His swing is tailor made for Yankee Stadium. To wit:

Career pull rate: 44.8% (MLB average: 39.8%)

Career ground ball rate: 28.4% (MLB average: 44.2%)

Career hard contact rate: 40.6% (MLB average: 31.8%)

When Bird makes contact, he tends to hit the ball hard, he tends to hit the ball in the air, and he tends to pull it to right field. Two-hundred-and-four left-handed batters have at least 300 plate appearances since Opening Day 2015. Among those 204, Bird has the lowest ground ball rate, the ninth highest hard contact rate, and the 35th highest pull rate. The guy was built for Yankee Stadium and the short porch.

The power will be there as long as Bird is healthy. I think the walks will be there too, because his chase rate on pitches out of the zone (25.5%) is well-below the league average (29.9%) and because watching him play, Bird is very patient and calm at the plate. He knows what he’s doing out there. I’m not sure he’ll run a Judge-esque walk rate (18.7%), but something north of 10% seems very doable.

The only real negative in Bird’s batted ball profile is the fact he pulls so many balls on the ground, making him susceptible to the shift. His career big league spray chart:

So many ground balls to the right side. So, so many. Hey, when you hit the ball hard in the air to the pull field as often as Bird, you’re going to roll over on a few. It happens. Bird has not been an all-fields hitter thus far in his career and that was never the book on him coming up as a prospect. He’ll lose some hits to the shift. He’ll hit a lot of balls over the shift and into the seats, but he’ll also lose some hits to the shift along the way.

And you know what? Losing hits to the shift is fine. It’s annoying, believe me I know, but you take the bad with the good. Bird is going to pepper the short porch and work walks. I don’t see him as a .300 hitter or even a .280 hitter, but I do think the various projection systems are low. I think Bird can be a .250/.340/.500 guy this season as long as he stays on the field. There might even be more power in there than that. Now it’s just up to Bird to stay on the field for a full season to show he can do it.

“There’s a lot of work to be done and I’ve got to do it,” said Bird to Hoch. “I’ve got to go out for a full season and be a reliable guy and play. I haven’t done it yet, so I’ve just got to go out and do it consistently for a whole year. That’s what I’ve been working towards. That’s what I’ve always wanted.”

At some point in the next five weeks and one day, the Yankees will finalize and announce their starting rotation order for the beginning of the 2018 season. They may have already picked out an order for all we know. Hopefully everyone makes it though Spring Training in one piece and the Yankees are able to set their starting five in whatever order they deem best.

So far new manager Aaron Boone has mostly brushed off questions about the rotation order — “To me, the order in which they pitch isn’t necessarily as big a deal,” he said over the weekend — and he’s yet to name an Opening Day starter. According to our poll, RAB readers would give the ball to Masahiro Tanaka in the season opener, though Luis Severino isn’t far behind. Either works for me.

“A lot that goes into (the rotation order) will be where these guys are physically,” said Boone to David Schoenfield over the weekend. “How we want to build in rest and off days as we look at the first month or two of the season, and we’ll look a little bit how they match up maybe against some teams.”

Like Boone said, the rotation order on Opening Day isn’t that big a deal. They’re five games in a 162-game season. The only thing that makes these games different is the ability to line up the rotation however you want. It’s tough to rearrange things in the middle of the season, and sometimes even going into the postseason. On Opening Day though, teams can set things up however they want.

Because of that, I think there are two things we can say about the rotation order with some level of certainty right now given the schedule and the team’s tendencies. They are:

CC Sabathia will start the fifth game of the season.

The Yankees will order their rotation with the fourth series of the season in mind, not the first.

The Yankees open the season with four games in Toronto, which means four games on turf. That’s not good for Sabathia’s degenerative right knee. In fact, last season the Yankees avoided starting Sabathia in Toronto (and Tampa Bay) whenever possible simply to keep him away from the turf. Because of that, I think they skip him that first series entirely, and have him start the fifth game of the season instead, which happens to be the home opener.

As for the second point, the Yankees are making an early trip up to Fenway Park this season. They’ll be there for a three-game series from Tuesday, April 10th through Thursday, April 12th. Those are the 11th, 12th, and 13th games of the season. The schedule sets up in such a way that the Yankees can start their top three starters in that series, all with an extra day of rest:

Five games in five days (four vs. Blue Jays, one vs. Rays)

Off-day

Five-games in five days (one vs. Rays, four vs. Orioles)

Off-day

Red Sox series

Two full turns through the rotation with an off-day following each. Perfect. The Yankees and Red Sox are, clearly, the two powerhouse teams in the AL East, and they figure to fight for the division title all season. I expect the Yankees to take advantage of the schedule and line up their top three starters for that series against the Red Sox. Every head-to-head game will matter so much. (The Red Sox can do the same, by the way. They can easily line up their top three starters for that series too.)

Now, the weather has a tendency to throw a wrench into rotation plans, especially in April, and there’s not much the Yankees or anyone can do about that. Starting Sabathia in the fifth game, away from the turf, will be a piece of cake. The Yankees begin the year with four games in a dome, so the weather will be a non-issue. Lining up the rotation for the Red Sox series — I assume Tanaka, Severino, and Sonny Gray would be the guys in whatever order — will take a little weather luck. What can you do? Just have to hope for the best.

The Sabathia thing is so ridiculously obvious that I would be stunned if it didn’t happen. Keeping him away from the turf in Toronto is a no-brainer, especially when it comes with the added bonus of starting him in the Yankee Stadium opener. The Red Sox thing is a little trickier because of the weather. The schedule does make it easy to line specific guys up for those games though, and I expect the Yankees to do that. If the weather cooperates, great. If not, well, at least they tried.

1. My official position: I like the trade. Maybe even love it! Not that I think Drury is a budding star or anything, but he fits the roster well, he’s young (25) and has some upside, and it didn’t cost the Yankees anyone they’ll miss. Didn’t soak up any precious luxury tax plan payroll dollars either. I mean, the hope was Solak would one day turn into what Drury is now, and when Drury was Solak’s age, he was already in the big leagues. The Yankees gave up six years of a potential future Drury for four years of the actual Drury. Widener was the cost of doing business. The Yankees subtracted nothing from their Major League roster and added a versatile young player who adds depth at their two most wide open positions. And, as Joel Sherman notes, the Yankees have an extra layer of insight into Drury because new third base coach Phil Nevin managed him in Triple-A from 2015-16. What’s not to like?

2. I’ve said several times in recent weeks that Neil Walker was my top infield target because he switch-hits, he has a history of getting on base, and he could play the three non-first base infield positions. Drury is the next best thing. He doesn’t switch-hit and he won’t walk much, but the power is legit …

?

… and he can play multiple positions. Second and third are his primary positions, though he also has experience at first base and left field, and he can even fill in at shortstop in a pinch. If the Yankees decide Miguel Andujar needs more time in Triple-A, Drury can play third. If they decide Gleyber Torres needs more time at Triple-A, Drury can play second. And if they decide neither needs more time at Triple-A, Drury can be a supersub. He can back up Greg Bird at first base too. Walker was my top target because I thought the lineup could use a switch-hitter with on-base ability. Drury is a fine alternative.

3. The Drury pickup likely squashes any chance of Mike Moustakas on a pillow contract, not that I thought the Yankees signing him was all that realistic. I bet he ends up with a market rate contract a la Lorenzo Cain, Yu Darvish, Eric Hosmer, and J.D. Martinez even though things aren’t looking good now. Maybe a #mysteryteam swoops in to sign him. The Phillies, maybe? The White Sox could work. Can’t rule out the Braves either. Anyway, point is the Yankees always seemed like a long shot for Moustakas, and now there’s basically no chance it happens. He doesn’t fit financially and there’s less of a need at third base. Never say never! But yeah, Moustakas ain’t happening, and I am totally cool with that.

4. You know who Drury replaces? Headley. Both guys project as league average or slightly below league average hitters this season with third base defense that is fine overall, but can be adventurous at times. Drury is eight years younger though, he’s much cheaper, and he can play second base (and left field) as well. Look at this:

The Yankees did all that while staying payroll neutral. Shedding Castro and Headley offsets Stanton’s salary, and Drury essentially slides into Mitchell’s payroll slot. Pretty amazing. The Yankees got younger and better, didn’t take on money, and didn’t trade any prospects that really hurt. Give Brian Cashman another Executive of the Year award.

5. This trade means nothing for Torres and Andujar long-term. They are still the future at second and third bases, respectively, and the Yankees won’t let Drury stand in the way of either. In the short-term, I think it is now more likely Andujar will return to Triple-A to begin the season. Sending Gleyber down for service time reasons makes too much sense — the injury and subsequent layoff provide the perfect cover — and I expected that to happen even before the Drury trade. It seems to me the potential loser here is Tyler Wade or Ronald Torreyes, though I’d bet good money on Torreyes making the Opening Day roster. It’s possible Wade will as well. Drury at third, Wade at second, Torreyes on the bench with Andujar and Torres in Triple-A. See? Doable. The trade does make the path to big league playing time a little more difficult for the kids and I don’t consider that a bad thing, even though I am bummed Andujar may have to wait a little longer to get his shot. A little friendly competition among infielders never hurt anyone. Drury is versatile enough that everyone can coexist on the roster when the time comes, and the Yankees won’t let him block any of their higher upside prospects.

6. Drury has an interesting plate discipline profile. He’s never drawn many walks (career 5.9 BB% in MLB and 6.0 BB% in the minors), though in his 1,038 big league plate appearances, his strikeout rate (20.3%), chase rate (30.8%), and swing-and-miss rate (9.9%) are all league average (21.6%, 29.9%, 10.9%). And, weirdly, he struggles against fastballs and punishes everything else:

Fastballs: .315 xwOBA (MLB average: .343 xwOBA)

Curveballs: .274 xwOBA (MLB average: .248 xwOBA)

Sliders: .302 xwOBA (MLB average: .256 xwOBA)

Changeups: .338 xwOBA (MLB average: .289 xwOBA)

Drury doesn’t walk, but his chase and swing-and-miss rates suggest he isn’t a mindless hacker. And he doesn’t struggle against pitches that bend. Maybe the Yankees think Drury is a tweak or two away from really breaking out? Something that helps him get around on fastballs a tad quicker could do wonders. He’ll be a nice little project for hitting coach Marcus Thames and assistant hitting coach P.J. Pilittere. And if nothing works, oh well. Drury is useful as is. But I think there’s some untapped potential here. Good things tend to happen with young players who have power, and don’t chase or whiff excessively.

(Christian Petersen/Getty)

7. The trade follows the pattern the Yankees established at the trade deadline. They’re trading prospects, but not their best prospects, and they’re dealing from positions of depth. Blake Rutherford and Dustin Fowler are very good outfield prospects, but they’re not Clint Frazier and Estevan Florial. Widener, Zack Littell, Jorge Guzman, and James Kaprielian are good pitching prospects, but they’re not Justus Sheffield, Albert Abreu, Dillon Tate, and Chance Adams. Solak is a good second base prospect, but he’s not Gleyber or Wade or Thairo Estrada. The Yankees are using their prospect surplus in exactly the right away. They’re trading those excess prospects for big league players. Solak and Widener are quality prospects, no doubt, but they are far down the depth chart and didn’t have much of a chance to become impact players for the Yankees anytime soon. The Yankees cashed them in as trade chips, and hey, the trade is good for them too. Solak and Widener will have greater long-term opportunities with the Rays and D’Backs, respectively. Everyone wins.

8. So what’s the second base depth chart look like right now? I guess it’s Drury, Torres, Wade, Torreyes, Thairo in that order. That’s a pretty nice list of names right there. Gleyber is the long-term answer, clearly, but Drury and Torreyes are already useful big leaguers, and Wade and Thairo have the potential to be useful big leaguers soon. (I’m a Wade guy. I think he’ll be more than useful.) Easy to understand why the Yankees were willing to part with Solak, huh? He was stuck behind a lot of talent. It’s no surprise then that Sherman says the Yankees tried to sell the Pirates on Solak as the second piece behind Frazier during Gerrit Cole trade talks. That didn’t work, obviously. Solak and Jorge Mateo are gone and the Yankees are still chock full o’ second base options. Pretty great.

9. And finally, I still expect the Yankees to add a pitcher soon, as in before Opening Day. The Drury trade actually creates some clarity for the pitcher search. The Yankees have their infielder, didn’t spend any of their finite luxury tax plan dollars, and didn’t trade any top prospects. They know what they need and exactly how much they have to offer, both in trades and free agency. I don’t think the Yankees want to give up draft picks or international bonus money for Lance Lynn or Alex Cobb, and aside from Jake Arrieta, the other free agent rotation options kinda stink. (Trevor Cahill? R.A. Dickey?) Chris Archer seems likely to move now that the Rays are in full blown tank mode, and the Drury trade shows the Yankees aren’t against sending prospects to Tampa. Would Tampa send Archer to the Yankees though? Who knows. Patrick Corbin and Michael Fulmer are the usual trade targets. I wonder if the Yankees will go off the board and try to pry someone like Michael Wacha or Kendall Graveman loose. We’ll see. I think a pitcher is coming though. The Yankees aren’t done.

Only two more workout days until the Grapefruit League season begins. Can’t wait. The excitement of pitchers and catchers (and position players) reporting has worn off already. Give me some games. Anyway, here’s the latest from Tampa:

No word on today’s bullpen sessions, though Masahiro Tanaka is scheduled to throw live batting practice Sunday. That means he won’t get into a Grapefruit League game until sometime next week. [Marly Rivera]

Neither Aaron Judge nor Giancarlo Stanton will play first base this spring. “I don’t think we want to mess too much with two elite level players and start moving them around too much,” said Aaron Boone. Tyler Austin, meanwhile, has a “real opportunity” to be Greg Bird’s backup at first base. [Bryan Hoch, Jack Curry]

Remember when Tyler Wade said he made some swing adjustments? He made them while working out with Albert Pujols over the winter. They use the same gym in California. Wade said Pujols helped him adjust his stance to avoid being jammed inside and the difference is “night and day.” [MeredithMarakovits, Hoch]

This is the nightly open thread. The Devils are playing, there’s some college basketball on the schedule, and the Olympics are still going as well. Talk about those games or anything else here, as long as it’s not religion or politics.

It was only a matter of time until the Yankees added an infielder after trading away Chase Headley and Starlin Castro, and they have done exactly that.

According to multiple reports, the Yankees have acquired Brandon Drury from the Diamondbacks in a three-team trade. They’d been on him since the Winter Meetings, so this deal didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. Here are the full trade details:

To Yankees: Brandon Drury

To Diamondbacks: Steven Souza, Taylor Widener

To Rays: Nick Solak, Anthony Banda, two players to be named later from Arizona

So it’s Solak and Widener for Drury, as far as the Yankees are concerned. The Yankees have openings at second and third bases, and the 25-year-old Drury can help fill either. He has extensive experience at second and third, and has also played left field at the MLB level. He also played some first base in the minors. A versatile player, he is.

Last season Drury, a right-handed hitter, authored a .267/.317/.447 (92 wRC+) batting line with 13 homers, a 21.5% strikeout rate, and a 5.8% walk rate in 480 big league plate appearances. He is a career .271/.319/.448 (95 wRC+) hitter at the MLB level. Drury has never been a big on-base guy, but he has pop. This trade is about dingers, infield depth, and versatility.

The 23-year-old Solak hit .297/.384/.452 (143 wRC+) with 12 homers in 538 plate appearances split between High-A Tampa and Double-A Trenton in 2017. He was slated to return to Trenton to begin 2018. Solak is basically a better version of Rob Refsnyder. He has more pop and a better chance to stay at second, but given who the Yankees have ahead of him on the depth chart, he was expendable.

Widener, 23, did the reliever-to-starter conversion thing last season and threw 119.1 innings with a 3.39 ERA (3.05 FIP) at High-A Tampa. His strikeout rate (26.4%) was strong, his walk rate (10.2 BB%) not so much. Widener is a mid-90s fastball guy even as a starter, and on his best days his slider will be unhittable. He’s still working to figure out a changeup. Pretty good chance Widener is destined for the bullpen long-term, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The Yankees drafted both Solak and Widener in 2016. Solak in the second round and Widener in the 12th. Drury was originally a 13th round pick by the Braves in 2010. They sent him to the D’Backs in the Justin Upton deal. Drury will make something close to the league minimum as a pre-arbitration-eligible player this year, and will remain under team control from 2019-21 as an arbitration-eligible player. Also, Drury has two minor league options remaining, so he can be sent to Triple-A, if necessary.

Since neither Solak nor Widener were on the 40-man roster, the Yankees are going to have to open a spot for Drury. They don’t have a 60-day DL candidate either. My guess is Jabari Blash, who came over in the Headley salary dump, gets the roster ace to clear a spot for Drury, but we’ll see. Ultimately, the Yankees moved two expendable prospects for a versatile big league piece with some upside who can help address their greatest needs. The Yankees are a better team today than yesterday.

Update: The Yankees have announced the trade and it is as reported. No surprises. Blash was indeed designated for assignment to clear a 40-man spot for Drury. I’m guessing he’ll clear waivers and remain in the organization as a non-40-man roster player. If not, we’ll always have those 25 homers ZiPS projected, Jabari.